ST. CHRISTOPHER AND OTHER POEMS BY ELIZABETH WORDSWORTH AUTHOR OF ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE CREED INDOORS AND OUT' ETC. WORDSWORTH, BISHOP OF LINCOLN' LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET 1890 All rights reserved APL3391 PREFACE A VERY FEW WORDS will suffice as introduction to a volume like the present. The story of St. Christopher, which has always had a special attraction for the writer, not merely on its own account, but for family 1 and personal reasons, will be found here, but very slightly altered, although accompanied by a kind of musical interlude, in which images drawn from the uses and functions of water in the natural world lead up to a higher spiritual interpretation. It is surely not impossible that the position frequently occupied by figures of St. Christopher near the church door, a place where the font is usually found, may be due to some more or less conscious association of his story with the thought of Holy Baptism, the time in the life of a Christian when the servitude of Evil is forsworn, and the sovereignty of Christ is acknowledged. The 'King's Father' is an attempt to reproduce in a dramatic form the very interesting sketch of M. Emmanuel De Broglie, 'Le Fils de Louis Quinze,' which reminds us that even in an age and court proverbially corrupt there was at least one untainted household, and one lofty and unworldly nature. The very inaction to which the Dauphin was condemned, while it moves our deepest sympathy, unfortunately makes his history somewhat unsuitable for dramatic purposes; the tragedy of his life consisted chiefly in the fact that there was no dénouement, no climax to be worked up to.1 Yet it is perhaps well for us to preserve, so far as in us lies, the memory of a character which under more favourable circumstances might have had a bright light shed on it by the poet or the historian ; a man of whom even the cynical Horace Walpole said that his death was the greatest loss which had befallen France since that of Henri IV. It is hardly necessary to apologise for some liberties taken with the subject, such as e.g. the undue prominence given to Madame Louise, to the exclusion of her sisters, which was almost necessary for dramatic purposes; the all but ignoring of the great Jesuit struggle; the making the date of the camp at Compiègne coincide with that of the death of Madame de Pompadour, and the substitution of the Duc de Bourgogne, whose early death had (1761) darkened the last years of the Dauphin, for his brother the future Louis XVI. in the closing scenes; and many 1 'Il mourut dévoré par le sentiment de son inutilité' (De Broglie). other weak points which those conversant with the period will at once detect. The object has been not to load the pages with details, but to create interest in one or two important characters, and to bring out the old but never hackneyed moral, that not what a man does, but what he is, should be the criterion by which he must be judged. It is interesting to know that the Dauphin's remains were preserved intact during the Revolution, and that France has not profaned the ashes of one of whom even Madame de Pompadour was forced to say, 'Le Dauphin a le cœur bon; c'est peut-être le seul héritier qui verserait des larmes à la mort de son père.' His devoted counsellor Du Muy, who had carried out the Dauphin's dying request, that he would be good to his children, by accepting office under Louis XVI., was buried at his old friend's feet in the Cathedral of Sens, with the inscription on his tomb, Hucusque luctus meus. OXFORD: Nov. 17, 1890. |